Community Reviews

This is another book I wish I had read in college. Ozick is so dang smart, and packs so much into her stories, I feel like I'm missing a lot by not studying them with a professor or at least in a group. Except for Grace Paley, I've never read any consciously Jewish American fiction by a woman (Bellow, Malamud, sure...). It was refreshing. I'll definitely seek out more Ozick in the future.

cynthia ozick is straight up one of my fav writers; she captures the jewish american experience w/ depth and humor, never shying away or (alternately) being exploitative of the pathos of survivors and refugees. so take these three stars with a grain of salt, because of these 5 fictions; 3.5 are forgettable, mired in obscurity through overwritten academic language that lets you drift away from whatever core emotion ozick is trying to get across. but 1.5 are knock-you-on-your-ass brilliant.

the recynthia ozick is straight up one of my fav writers; she captures the jewish american experience w/ depth and humor, never shying away or (alternately) being exploitative of the pathos of survivors and refugees. so take these three stars with a grain of salt, because of these 5 fictions; 3.5 are forgettable, mired in obscurity through overwritten academic language that lets you drift away from whatever core emotion ozick is trying to get across. but 1.5 are knock-you-on-your-ass brilliant.

the real star here is 'puttermesser and xanthippe' - a story aout a woman who breathes life into a golem just as her world is falling apart, and the golem, as a function of her most pure self, helps her get elected to mayor of new york city, which she turns into a paradise; a modern eden. the golem becomes reckless and sexually curious however, and begins destroying this eden until eventually puttermesser has to return the golem to darkness. its a pretty deft allegory for 'writing' (writing about writing had been addressed in a previous story as being forbidden): puttermesser (author) creates xanthippe (novel); xanthippe then gives birth to the new versionof puttermesser, as the mayor of new york, before eventually destroying her. about how our creations define us and then change us, they grow past our control and beyond our reach and become our worst enemies while we remain emotionally attached, willing to let it kill us before we're willing to let it go. craaaazzy....more

For my money, Cynthia Ozick is the greatest American writer of the last 50 years whose name isn't Toni Morrison, but somewhat frustratingly none of her story collections are perfect--they all contain an example or two of her awesome originality and brilliance, and then a few duds. Fortunately this is rendered more or less irrelevant by the fact that they are all individually out of print in the US, but I've seen the UK-published "The Collected Stories of Cynthia Ozick" at multiple half-pricedFor my money, Cynthia Ozick is the greatest American writer of the last 50 years whose name isn't Toni Morrison, but somewhat frustratingly none of her story collections are perfect--they all contain an example or two of her awesome originality and brilliance, and then a few duds. Fortunately this is rendered more or less irrelevant by the fact that they are all individually out of print in the US, but I've seen the UK-published "The Collected Stories of Cynthia Ozick" at multiple half-priced books. This, along with "The Puttermesser Papers", contains every short story or novella Ozick has published (except "Dictation," which I haven't read), so five stars for both of those, and go buy them....more

Ozick's stories all seem to start off on a relatively normal path before veering off into the absurd, surreal and very strange. It's hard to tell what the hell she is doing sometimes but its nevertheless entertaining and her stellar prose keeps you reading.

Recipient of the first Rea Award for the Short Story (in 1976; other winners Rea honorees include Lorrie Moore, John Updike, Alice Munro), an American Academy of Arts and Letters Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, and the PEN/Malamud award in 2008.

Upon publication of her 1983 The Shawl, Edmund White wrote in the New York Times, "Miss Ozick strikes me as the best American writer to have emergRecipient of the first Rea Award for the Short Story (in 1976; other winners Rea honorees include Lorrie Moore, John Updike, Alice Munro), an American Academy of Arts and Letters Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award, and the PEN/Malamud award in 2008.

Upon publication of her 1983 The Shawl, Edmund White wrote in the New York Times, "Miss Ozick strikes me as the best American writer to have emerged in recent years...Judaism has given to her what Catholicism gave to Flannery O'Connor."